2025–26 Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship

During its second semester, the fellowship includes a public lecture at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts and an exhibition, which is typically held at the school.

Now in its seventh year, the Garofalo Fellowship has made an essential contribution to the school’s culture. 

The Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of individual and corporate donations, as well as grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Application instructions

The Douglas A. Garofalo Fellowship is a nine-month teaching and research fellowship open to emerging designers from any location. Studio instruction and lecture classes are a central part of the fellowship. A professional or graduate degree in architecture is required. Applicants must apply as individuals; no group applications will be accepted.

The selected fellow will be expected to be in primary residence in Chicago from mid-August 2025 through mid-May 2026.

The fellowship is the equivalent of a full-time faculty position.

Applicants should prepare the following materials for submission via the web form:

• Curriculum vitae

• Proposal describing research to be conducted as a Garofalo Fellow, 500–750 words

• Teaching statement, 500–750 words

• Portfolio of selected work; no more than ten pages

• Names and contact information of three references

The application deadline is February 14, 2025, at 11:59 pm CST.

Finalists will be asked to visit Chicago for an interview and public presentation in April 2025. All applicants will be notified of their status by the end of April 2025.

About Doug Garofalo

Doug Garofalo, FAIA, began teaching at the UIC School of Architecture in 1987. Over his twenty-five years at the school, he moved through all faculty ranks, from part-time adjunct to tenured full professor, and served as Interim Director from 2001 to 2003. Representing the highest ideal of the academic practitioner, Garofalo was a tireless mentor and source of inspiration for the students, junior faculty, and architects who worked with him.

After receiving professional degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Yale University, Garofalo formed his practice, Garofalo Architects, in 1988. Garofalo was at the forefront of introducing advanced digital and conceptual models to architectural design and education. In collaboration with small offices in New York and Cincinnati, Garofalo Architects realized the earliest significant digitally informed project in the United States, the Korean Presbyterian Church of New York in Queens (1996–99), which augured not only a new style of contemporary design, but perhaps more radically a new way of practicing architecture.

In 2006, Garofalo was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. His practice was frequently awarded; in 2007, the Hyde Park Art Center received both the Distinguished Building Award from AIA Chicago and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design, and in 2008, Garofalo was named a United States Artist Fellow. He often collaborated with other architects and artists, including with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on the design planning for the 2016 Chicago Olympic bid and as architect of record for UNStudio’s Burnham Pavilion, realized to commemorate Chicago’s bicentennial.

In supporting the work of the school’s faculty over the course of his career, Garofalo made an invaluable contribution in launching architectural careers in Chicago and elsewhere. The Garofalo Fellowship aims to allow an emerging architect to benefit, as he did, from the opportunity to teach and conduct research at the school at an early stage of practice.